Published , by Asif Khan
Published , by Asif Khan
Sega has been caught up in a lot of acquisition rumors in the past few years, and most of those stories involve a larger company gobbling up the company behind Sonic the Hedgehog. Today, a report has surfaced that Sega may be acquiring Angry Bird developer Rovio in a deal worth nearly $1 billion. Rovio has been shopping itself around, with a rumored $800 million deal with Playtik Holding Corp. falling through last month.
WSJ is reporting that a nearly $1 billion deal to acquire Rovio may close early next week. The report does not detail how much of the deal would be in stock or cash. Rovio has never been able to beat the smash hit success of their game Angry Birds, which the company claims was the first mobile game to be downloaded 1 billion times. Rovio's stock is still down over 30% from its IPO that took place in 2017.
This certainly isn't the first time we have seen a third party game developer make a splash in the mobile space, with Activision Blizzard gobbling up Candy Crush dev King Digital Entertainment, and Take-Two Interactive recently acquiring Zynga for over $10 billion. It remains to be seen how well Sega is going to be able to absorb Rovio if the deal closes.
Mobile gaming is in a bit of a recession currently, with revenues dropping year-over-year in 2022 after very strong performance from mobile devs during the lockdown years of 2020 and 2021. As for what Sega and Rovio have cooking, we will have to wait and see if this rumored deal will lead to more Sega IP appearing on mobile devices. With nearly a billion dollars on the line, this could be a very big move for Sonic and company.
Keep it locked on Shacknews for all the video game market news as it breaks.